Chapter Three
Gargoyle At My Door
Harper
There’s a black motorcycle outside my apartment.
Not parked directly in front. That would be too obvious, and apparently, Marcus “Steel” Holt is the kind of terrifying man who understands subtlety when subtlety helps him be more terrifying.
Yes, I did some digging. I now know more about him than before, though none of it has helped me feel better about the damn situation or the way he makes me feel—which I’ll deny with my dying breath.
I glare at the motorcycle as it sits across the street beneath a broken streetlamp, all chrome and shadow, angled toward my building like a guard dog with an engine.
I stop on the sidewalk with my keys clenched between my fingers.
Behind me, Milo makes a thoughtful noise. “Huh.”
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You made a sound.”
“I’m allowed sounds.”
“You’re allowed silence.”
He shifts his duffel higher on his shoulder and looks from the bike to me, then back to the bike. “Maybe it belongs to someone else.”
I stare at him. “You can’t be that na?ve.”
He sighs. “Yeah, okay. It’s definitely his.”
I should be furious. No. Correction. I am furious.
The kind of furious that burns clean through exhaustion and makes my blood move faster.
I have been on shift for eighteen hours.
I have vomit on one boot, dried antiseptic on my forearm, and a headache drilling behind my right eye.
I don’t have the energy to be stalked by a tattooed outlaw with control issues and a savior complex.
I turn toward the street.
Milo grabs my sleeve. “Harper.”
“What?”
“Maybe don’t go poke the bear.”
“I’m not poking the bear.”
“You’re walking toward the bear with murder posture.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
I pull free and cross the street before he can keep trying to be reasonable with me. The bike is deserted. I look around, scanning the parked cars, the alley beside the laundromat, the mouth of the narrow passage between my building and the liquor store. Nothing.
But I feel him, and I hate that I feel him.
“Are you going to lurk all night,” I call, “or are you only creepy on weekdays?”
Silence, before a shadow detaches itself from the side of the closed pawn shop. Steel steps into the wash of a flickering sign.
He looks exactly like he did outside the hospital, which is ridiculous because no one should be able to look that steady after the kind of night we all had. Shaved head. Scarred jaw. Black cut. Thick arms covered in dark ink. A body built less like a man and more like a final warning.
His eyes move over me. Not slowly and not with heat but with assessment. That irritates me even more.
“I’m fine,” I snap before he can ask.
His gaze pauses on my boot. “You’ve got vomit on you.”
“Occupational hazard.”
“A patient?”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“The vomit.”
“Oh, my God.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Yes, it was a patient. Do you usually ask women that?”
“No.”
“Lucky me.”
Milo, who has apparently ignored every survival instinct he owns, appears beside me with a nervous smile. “Hi. Again. Big fan of not dying last night.”
Steel glances at him. “Did you see the black sedan again?”
Milo’s smile collapses, and my irritation explodes. I turn slowly. “What black sedan?”
Milo’s face goes pale in a way I know too well. The color drains first around the mouth, then his eyes go wide. He knows he’s been caught.
“Milo.”
He clears his throat. “There may have been a car.”
“There may have been?” I raise a brow, demanding answers.
“Outside the station.”
“When?”
“Earlier.”
“How much earlier?”
He looks at Steel like he might rescue him, but Steel doesn’t move an inch or say a single word. Smart man.
“Milo,” I say softly.
He winces. “A few hours ago.”
A cold thread slides down my spine, and I turn to Steel. “And you know about this because?”
His expression doesn’t change. “I followed them.”
The world goes very still. “You what?”
“I followed them.”
“You followed them,” I repeat, because apparently my brain needs to taste the stupidity twice.
“Yes.”
Milo makes a small sound. “This feels like my cue to go upstairs.”
I point at him without looking away from Steel. “You stay right there.” He stops dead in his tracks.
Steel’s gaze flicks toward my building, the street, the alley, every window with a dark square of glass. “You need to go inside.”
I laugh once. “My apartment? That’s rich. I was already going inside before I found a six-foot-five felony outside my building.”
“Six-four.”
“I don’t care.”
“You’re exposed out here.”
“And whose fault is that?”
His jaw flexes. “The men watching your station weren’t mine.”
My stomach tightens. There it is again. That calm, brutal delivery that makes fear feel less like panic and more like fact.
“Who were they?” I ask.
“Men employed by the Broken Vultures.”
Milo whispers, “Jesus.”
I know enough about Vegas to know the name. They are a one-percenter motorcycle club made up of bad men who make other bad men look civilized. We scrape their victims off the asphalt sometimes, and nobody says their name loudly in emergency rooms.
I fold my arms, mostly so Steel can’t see my hands curl. “Why would they watch me?”
Steel’s eyes hold mine. “Because you treated a Sons of Sin member.”
“I treated a patient.” I correct.
“They won’t care,” he replies.
“I didn’t ask them to care.”
“That won’t make a difference, and I know you’re smart enough to understand that.”
My temper flares because it’s better than fear. “You people are unbelievable. You bleed in public, drag normal people into your violence, and then act like the rest of us should be grateful when you show up with your warnings and your big scary shadows.”
Milo mutters, “I mean, he is a very big shadow.”
“Milo.” I hiss.
“Sorry.”
Steel doesn’t move, doesn’t argue, and doesn’t defend himself. That’s somehow worse.
“You’re right,” he says, and the words slap the anger right out of my mouth.
I stare at him, and he looks back without flinching. “You didn’t ask for this.”
“No,” I say, sharper than I mean to. “I didn’t.”
“But you’re in it.”
“Because of you.”
His face shuts down. Just a fraction, but that’s enough for me to see it and hate myself for noticing.
“Because of the club,” he corrects.
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“No.” Something in his voice makes me pause.
Steel is violent. I know that. I knew it the moment I saw him standing over blood with a gun in his hand, issuing orders like judgment. But right now, there’s something else under the violence. Something carved deep and old. Loyalty.
That might be worse. A man who loves nothing is dangerous. A man who loves one thing enough to kill for it is catastrophic.
Milo shifts. “Harper, maybe we should go up. Lock the door. Pretend our lives are normal.”
“My life was normal yesterday.”
“No,” Milo says carefully. “Your life was scheduled. That’s not the same.”
I hate him a little. Mostly because he is right.
I turn toward my building. “Fine. I’m going upstairs.”
Steel moves with me, and I stop. He stops too.
“No,” I say flatly, glaring up at him.
His eyes narrow. “No?”
“You aren’t coming into my apartment.”
“You don’t know if it’s clear.”
“I know if I let you in, I’ll never get the smell of testosterone and poor choices out of my curtains.”
Milo coughs to hide his laughter.
Steel looks over my shoulder at the building entrance. “I’ll check it. Then I’ll leave.”
“I can call the police.”
“You could.”
“You don’t sound worried.”
“I’m not.”
I step closer, not much, just enough to make a point I probably shouldn’t be making with a man who looks like he can bend steel bars with one hand.
“Listen to me very carefully, Marcus.” His eyes sharpen at the sound of his legal name.
“I don’t care what you do for your club.
I don’t care how many men jump when you grunt.
I am not yours to move around. I am not one of your prospects, or your club girls, or your problems. You don’t get to appear outside my home and start making decisions for me. ”
Steel looks down at me, and for one awful, electric second, I feel every inch of him. His heat. His stillness. The careful way he keeps his hands at his sides.
Then he says, “I know.” Soft, yet rough. Quiet enough to crawl under my skin.
My breath catches, and I hate that too. “So, stop acting like it,” I say.
His gaze drops to my mouth, only for a second, but I see it. And my body, traitorous idiot that it is, reacts. Heat flashes low in my stomach, sudden and unwanted. I am exhausted, scared, angry, and covered in someone else’s bodily fluids. This is not the time for attraction.
There’s no time for attraction to Marcus Holt. Ever.
“Harper,” Milo says, his voice too gentle.
I step back. “Fine. You can check the apartment. Don’t touch my things. Don’t comment on my laundry. Don’t murder anyone unless necessary.”
Steel’s mouth twitches. It’s almost nothing, but it twists my insides anyway.
“Understood,” he says.
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
We cross the street together, and I think that’s what bothers me most. How naturally my body adjusts to his presence. Steel walks slightly behind me, not crowding, not guiding, just there. A hulking wall of threat at my back.
Milo walks on my other side, whispering, “This is how horror movies start,” and I pretend not to agree.
My apartment building smells like old carpet, lemon cleaner, and somebody’s burned dinner. The elevator is broken again because the universe is deeply committed to my suffering, so we take the stairs to the third floor.
Steel doesn’t breathe harder, but Milo does. I make a note to mock him later when I’m not busy being stalked by crazy bikers.
At my door, I unlock the deadbolt but keep it closed. Steel waits, and that matters to me even though I wish it didn’t.
I push the door open, and he enters first.
The apartment suddenly looks smaller. My secondhand couch, my narrow kitchen, the bookshelf stuffed with medical texts and thrift-store mysteries, the blanket folded crooked over the armchair. Steel moves through it like a weapon, trying not to knock over a life.